


Christmas light

by crimsonepitaph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Christmas Angst, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Fairies, Gen, Mild Language, basically Christmas all around, hurt!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonepitaph/pseuds/crimsonepitaph
Summary: Heard on the radio: ‘man explodes into glass pieces on Christmas Eve’. And, well, how can Sam and Dean pass up that? Set in S1.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JJ1564](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJ1564/gifts).



> Author's note #1: A huge, huge thank you to borgmama1of5. She's about the only reason this story is anything resembling readable. ♥
> 
> Author's note #2: Written for this year's exchange over at spn_j2_xmas, for jj1564. Hope this fic is something enjoyable, I tried to follow the prompt and mix some of your likes in. Happy holidays!!
> 
> Author's note #3: Divider from [here](http://www.clipartkid.com/christmas-divider-cliparts/).

“Dean?”  
  
Dean manages a “Yeah?” around the mouthful of Christmas decoration he is scarfing down.  
  
“That gingerbread house was decorative.”  
  
“It’s gingerbread, Sam.”  
  
“And it’s probably held together with glue!”  
  
“Guess it’ll stick to my ribs.”  
  
Well, Sam supposes it is holiday season, so he should just give his brother a pass on eating his way through the victim’s house. Apparently Dean’s appetite isn’t affected by walking around the remains of William Shore – the unfortunate victim whose body is shattered into smithereens, brittle flesh-colored shards covering the wood flooring.  
  
Actually, Mr. Shore’s remains are a rainbow of colors. Blue – maybe jeans? The biggest fragment is the size of Sam’s palm. He spots what is clearly one-half of an eyeball, the iris split neatly in two. He can’t help but spend a moment looking for the rest of it, but there are too many pieces. It’s like a human-sized Christmas ornament had exploded – an amalgam of colors, of layers of skin and insides and things Sam never, ever wants to see again because pieces of a person should not be shiny and reflective.  
  
On the Winchester scale of weird, this ranks near the top, he thinks. And that’s saying something, given their encounter with a human-turned-murderous-cannibal recently. Sam doesn’t suppose he could find clues about this in his father’s journal, too.  
  
Sam rolls his eyes at his brother and goes in the kitchen to talk to the hysterical wife, whom he left in the care of Officer Chatburn half an hour earlier.  
  
Nancy Chatburn, about forty, red hair pulled back, crisp, pressed uniform and a disapproving look when Sam enters the room.  
  
They hadn’t gotten off on the right foot.  
  
Sam figures Officer Chatburn is angry at having to work Christmas Eve, upset at the bizarreness of Mr. Shore’s demise, and pissed off by strangers meddling in town business.  
  
“So what’s your conclusion, Agent Bonham?” she asks, looking up at him and frowning. “Find anything?”  
  
Besides his brother currently eating the foot of a chocolate Santa, no, nothing.  
  
Sam shakes his head.  
  
Officer Chatburn narrows her eyes. “So FBI not gonna just swoop in and solve this.”  
  
It isn’t like there’s anything to be said that would make this situation better…Sam doesn’t have any idea if there are words for it to even make sense, honestly.  
  
“Mrs. Shore?” Sam approaches the wife tentatively, so as not to freak her out, more than she already is. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”  
  
The woman – brown hair, blue eyes, soccer-mom haircut – raises her head, and, for a second, Sam thinks she’s attained some coherence. But no such luck.  
  
She bursts into another fit of sobbing, louder this time.  
  
“The last thing I did was call him an asshole,” she wails. “He kept saying it was staring at him, and he was gonna move it to the back, and I told him to leave it alone and he dropped it and I was so mad because he broke it and ruined the set…”  
  
“Can you tell me again what you saw, ma’am?”  
  
The cop glares at Sam over the wife’s hysterics and answers for her. “How many times are you going to ask her that? She said he just exploded. And you can see that for yourself.”  
  
Mrs. Shore’s sobs are shaking her whole body now and she’s gasping for air between them. Poor woman needs a sedative, and fast, Sam thinks.  
  
“Is there someone…” he asks tentatively. To his surprise, the officer gently suggests she can take Mrs. Shore to her sister’s house so she doesn’t have to stay at the scene. Sam notes she doesn’t say ‘crime scene’ because, well, Sam can see how it would be a challenge to figure out what crime just occurred.  
  
When Sam returns to the living room, Dean’s more or less in the same spot, staring at a framed photo of the victim and his wife.  
  
“Did you –“  
  
Move. Find anything. Do anything besides eat.  
  
Dean turns around. “Huh?”  
  
“Any ideas?” is what Sam decides on saying.  
  
The frown on Dean’s face doesn’t look very promising, but then he nods, points to the stack of empty bottles on the couch.  
  
“I think the guy drank it all.”  
  
Sam sighs. “Something besides the obvious, Dean.”  
  
Sure, two bottles of whiskey on Christmas Eve morning is not the best idea, but, as Dean has proved, multiple times, it doesn’t make you shatter into pieces like a broken glass.  
  
“No,” Dean says, walking toward the adjoining room and pointing towards the set table. “See? That’s a table for twelve. The good cutlery, the fine china…that’s nice guest stuff she set up. I’m guessing him drinking the whole bar wasn’t on the day’s agenda.”  
  
“So what? They fought. Isn’t like holidays don’t bring up all the bad stuff.”  
  
Dean snickers. “Easy there, Grinch. Just sayin’..”  
  
Sam ponders a moment, remembers the last thing Mrs. Shore said. “She said ‘he broke it.’ Wonder what.”  
  
Dean seems to have the same amount of answers as him, namely none, because the next thing that comes out of his brother’s mouth is “Food?”  
  
“Really? You just ate.”  
  
“Cookies. I ate cookies. I need real food now.”  
  
Right. Can’t argue with Dean logic, so next stop is the closest greasy spoon.  


 

 

                                                                             

 

Greasy spoon-slash-bar, the only place open the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Sam can’t believe that Dean can eat off a plate that bears the marks of last week’s breakfast on it.  
  
Doesn’t even have salads.  
  
Freaking middle-of-nowhere, Iowa.  
  
Sam busies himself with studying the other patrons of the bar, but, truth be told, there isn’t much to be seen. There’s a man in the corner booth staring at a bottle of beer like it holds all the secrets of the universe, a group of three definitely tipsy thirty-somethings that have been leering at Sam and Dean since they sat down, and a bored waitress with eyes glued to her phone.  
  
It’s only the festive decorations that take the dive bar out of the ordinary of their everyday life, though the Santa hanging lopsidedly on the wall is sadly pathetic with its moth-eaten beard and threadbare red suit.  
  
“You have to eat something, Sam,” Dean huffs, unsatisfied with the way Sam just moves the food on his plate from one spot to another.  
  
“Yeah, I prefer that week old sandwich in the Impala to this,” Sam replies, finally giving up and putting his fork down.  
  
He’s been trying to convince himself that whatever he ate won’t come back in a few minutes.  
  
“Going to the can,” Sam unceremoniously stands up.  
  
Dean nods distractedly, moving his attention from the god-awful burger he’d ordered to the group of women three tables down.  
  
Sam gives his brother a look.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get pissy,” Dean mumbles like he can hear Sam’s innermost thoughts.  
  
When Sam gets back and sees that Dean’s now talking to his admiring fans, he decides to settle at the bar.  
  
“What are you having, handsome?” the bartender – average height, light-brown hair, blue eyes and lip ring that traces the curve of his lower lip – gives Sam his full attention.  
  
Sam’s a little dumbfounded at the warm welcome.  
  
“Um – water. Glass of water.“  
  
He really doesn’t need to model Dean’s drinking habits.  
  
“Aw, that’s all? C’mon, a guy your size ought to be able to hold your liquor.”  
  
There’s an exaggerated pout to go with the words, and Sam decides that no, he wasn’t imagining it, the bartender is hitting on him.  
  
And it’s not the fact that it’s a guy that’s making Sam uncomfortable, but that it’s happening at all.  
  
He isn’t interested. Not here, not now.  
  
Besides the fact that it’s Christmas Eve, and they’re working a case, and Sam doesn’t do this, He can’t, and won’t, probably, for a long time, until the image that comes into his mind isn’t Jess, isn’t her body burning on the ceiling.  
  
“Give him a break,” a feminine voice interrupts Sam’s train of thought, and for the second time in a few minutes, he wonders if he’s broadcasting to everyone around.  
  
“Huh?” is Sam’s excessively smart reply.  
  
Officer Chatburn takes the seat beside him, smirking.  
  
“Just sayin’, you and your boy there are the first new pieces of ass the town’s seen in a long time.”  
  
“Yeah – uh,“ Sam gathers his wits enough to say, ”Right. What are you doing here?”  
  
She arches an eyebrow.  
  
“What, a cop not allowed to drink? Besides, Mrs. Shore’s all taken care of and there’s nothing much to do for Mr. Shore besides sweep him up.”  
  
Officer Chatburn turns towards the bartender.  
  
“Agents Bonham and Jones here are helping with the case,” she explains.  
  
“Wait, Bonham, like – ?”  
  
“Yeah, coincidence. Get that all the time,” Sam changes the subject, might as well keep trying to work the case. “Did you know Mr. Shore?”  
  
“Bill Shore?” the guy asks, finishing off wiping a glass. “Wasn’t the best of men, but nothing out of the ordinary. Slept here more than a dozen times, that bitchy wife of his would come to haul him off, but nothing more than that,” he shrugs.  
  
Sam wants to ask if either of his conversation partners have ever seen anything weird in the area, but before he gets the question out the bartender looks at him pointedly.  
  
“You don’t get Christmas off, Agent Bonham?”  
  
“We were in the area, so we thought we’d check it out.”  
  
Which is actually true, they were on their way back from a vengeful spirit case when they heard the blurb about ‘man explodes into glass pieces on Christmas Eve’ on the radio and thought it was worth a look.  
  
“How mighty kind of you,” the bartender says, and Sam doesn’t understand if that’s supposed to be sarcastic or a come-on of some kind.  
  
“Give him a break, Danny. Good-looking men. Ain’t that a sight ‘round these parts?”  
  
Well, that – that was definitely ironic.  
  
“Be better naked,” the bartender – Danny – drawls, with an unflinching gaze meeting Sam’s.  
  
Sam’s breath catches in his chest, all thoughts stopping in their tracks. He smiles awkwardly, nods, then tries to focus on the thread of conversation he clearly lost.  
  
“I-I’m on duty,” he gets out, pretty sure he looks like a deer-in-the-headlights, “but any help concerning the case would be greatly appreciated.”  
  
“Well –“  
  
But he doesn’t get to hear the rest of that, thankfully, because a hand on his shoulder and a low, scratchy voice in his ear interrupt.  
  
“Time to go, Sam.”  
  
Dean.  
  
“Dean, you remember Officer Chatburn?“  
  
“Yeah, great,” Dean says without listening, and pulls at Sam’s shirt. “Sam, now.”  
  
Sam wonders what happened this time. Did the ladies at the table get too handsy? He prepares to make a joke, except the look on Dean’s face is dead serious. Sam mumbles some half-assed excuse to his audience of two, and takes off behind Dean as he strides outside.  
  
Past the door he faces Dean with puzzlement.  
  
“Dean, what?”  
  
“That,” Dean says, pointing towards two foot-tall women in long flowing dresses carrying wands who are floating along the street about six feet above the ground.  
  
As weird things go, Sam and Dean have seen weirder – but not by much.  
  
Sam starts after them but Dean grabs his arm, points towards the Impala. “The car.”  
  
Sam shrugs him off, sure that he can catch up to the little figures. He’s not sure how – if – they are linked to Mr. Shore – but if he’s learned one thing from all those years hunting with Dad, it’s that the weird things are usually connected.  
  
”C’mon, Sam. Definitely car.”  
  
Which proves to be the smart choice, because the women or – whatever it is in front of them – are moving at a pretty fast speed.  
  
“What the hell are they?“ Dean voices Sam’s thoughts as they stare out the windshield. Dean clips the curb making a sharp right when the floating things abruptly turn down a side street.  
  
“It looks – fairies. They look – like fairies”  
  
“Huh?” Dean asks, turning another sharp corner and forcing Sam to grab the door in an effort to hold on.  
  
“They look like ornaments from a Christmas tree. The wings, the wands? The dresses? See how one of them is wearing red and green and the other one is in gold and white?” Sam tries to explain what it looks like to him, though he’s not convinced himself about what he’s saying.  
  
Dean frowns.  
  
“You telling me fairies are real?!” Dean yells in frustration after yet another turn that makes the Impala screech trying to keep up with the spectacle in front of them.  
  
So, the fairies might have figured out someone’s following them.  
  
Not that hard, since Sam and Dean the only ones out on the street.  
  
With a sudden burst of energy, the fairies leave the sidewalk and head into a front yard decorated with a giant plastic snowman.  
  
“God damn it, Dean! OW!”  
  
Dean stomps on the brakes and Sam hits the dashboard with a painful crash. Damage to his ribs and chin aside, he’s out of the car almost at the same time as Dean, gun out.  
  
Sam realizes belatedly they’re back at Mr. Shore’s house.  
  
The creatures – the women – stop on the front porch, stare at Sam and Dean with an eerie look in their glistening eyes. They sway slowly from side to side, humming a tune that Sam can hear fifteen feet away. The door to the house opens soundlessly.  
  
“Come, come,” their voices ring like twinkling lights.  
  
The fairies each raise an arm in a graceful, synchronous gesture of their wands.  
  
Sam barely has time to process what’s happening when he feels his feet leaving the ground, sees the grey, cloudy sky above him.  
  
He’s floating.  
  
By Dean’s colorful curse somewhere on his right, Sam guesses they’re both experiencing the same disorienting view.  
  
But he doesn’t have time to think more than that, because air whizzes past and the sky becomes a ceiling as he’s propelled through the doorway and into the Shores’ living room. Then, the soft air that pillowed his flight vanishes and Sam meets the unwelcoming hardwood floor, which does serious damage to his back when he drops onto it from eight feet up.  
  
There’s a loud, sickening crack, and Sam doesn’t have to turn towards the sound to know it’s Dean’s shoulder popping out. Again. A souvenir from the vengeful spirit, the repair not set long enough to last under eight-foot-drop conditions.  
  
Loud grunt of pain and another string of curses aside, Dean’s up in no time, gun in his left hand.  
  
Sam’s there with him – except he’s seeing double, and his back alerts him that remaining horizontal would have been a good idea, and, wondering, for some reason, why they still have their guns.  
  
That should be a good thing. Right?  
  
But Sam’s thought process can’t really be trusted right now because what he hears, when there’s finally no more ringing dulling every function in his brain, is a plea, the fairy dressed in red and green coming forward, closer, right up to the barrel of Dean’s gun.  
  
“Send us back, please.”  


 

 

                                                                         

“Wait, wait, you’re – Christmas tree ornaments. And you come to life,” Dean concludes ten minutes after that, signaling his disbelief with a wave of the icepack Sam got for his shoulder from the fridge after Sam popped it back in place. And how messed up is it that Sam can do that now without even thinking about it?  
  
“Yes,” the one in the white and gold dress says.  
  
It’s strange, looking at them. They would seem almost human, if it wasn’t for the glassy, nearly sinister look in their eyes. And the fact that they’re both twelve inches tall. But their slim bodies are covered in fantastically detailed dresses, bright, elegant, festive, almost…angelic. Sam can see them as the beautiful decorations they are supposed to be. Except for what the red-and-green one is saying.  
  
“Our sister was murdered.”  
  
“We had no choice but come to your world,” the first one adds.  
  
“He,” the red-and-green fairy cries out, sudden and sharp, looking at the spot on the floor where pieces of Mr. Shore were earlier, “he killed her.”  
  
“He shouldn’t have touched us. We belong to the mistress of the house, she brings us out every year. And gives us our places of honor on the tree. He had no right to touch our sister! much less remove her from her bough! He would not be dead had he not touched her.”  
  
Dean frowns. “Huh? What?”  
  
“He did not like where our sister was looking. When he went to move her, he killed her.”  
  
“Our maker said nobody can hurt us. He protected us,” red-and-green adds unhelpfully. “But she cracked. Into a million pieces. Gone…”  
  
Well, that explains some of it. The sisters continue humming, a low, almost imperceptible, heart-wrenching echo that sends shivers up Sam’s spine.  
  
“He – um – did Mr. Shore drop your sister?” Sam asks, putting the pieces together.  
  
They nod in unison.  
  
“Your maker? Who is he?”  
  
White-and-gold takes that one. “ _She_ made us with magic, to give beauty to others. And her gift to us is that on Christmas Eve we are granted life to bask in the light.”  
  
Dean catches the last part. “Light? What light?”  
  
“You have never seen it?”  
  
“Or felt it?”  
  
The fairy in the red and green dress shakes her head. “You poor man.”  
  
“But we can no longer enjoy it … our sister is no longer with us. We are not whole. ”  
  
“We do not know what to do. We feel wrong…”  
  
It’s somewhere between creepy and amusing how they complete each other’s sentences. Sam’s thoughts are racing as he tries to put together all the information they now have.  
He expected a fight after the violent introduction. Not a conversation, not sorrowing lost souls. They didn’t run from Sam and Dean. The fairy ornaments weren’t trying to hurt them when they brought them in the house – they were trying to get help in the only way they knew how.  
  
“How old are you?” Dean asks, interrupting Sam’s thoughts.  
  
Sam would protest, except he wants to hear the answer.  
  
“Old…very old.”  
  
Conversations with inanimate-objects-turned-real can get really frustrating.  
  
“It must be the seventeenth generation,” white fairy finally answers.  
  
The seventeenth generation that owned the figurines – and, presumably, the maker was human. That means –  
  
“Your maker … you understand she died, right? A long time ago.”  
  
White-and-gold nods, looking directly at Sam. “We understand many Christmas Eves have passed since our maker was with us. But that does not mean she reneges on her promise.”  
  
“Oh, sister, if only it worked like that,” Dean laughs bitterly.  
  
Sam postpones analyzing that reaction until they figure out what to do with the two in front of them, hovering chest-level above the floor, distractedly waving their wands about.  
  
“What did she promise you?” Sam asks them.  
  
“That we would come to no harm.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“That if we did, we would not feel it.”  
  
“But we did…” red-and-green says.  
  
“And it is horrible. Our world has been ripped in half. We do not know how to go back.”  
  
Sam knows that pain. Jessica.  
  
The pain, like that is all there is.  
  
The screams that only sound inside his head.  
  
The anger that comes after.  
  
“What happened when Shore dropped your…sister?” Dean asks, not noticing how Sam has frozen.  
  
“It was agony, like we were also destroyed.”  
  
“We tried to push the pain away and the man broke. We did not mean to do it…it just happened.”  
  
They hadn’t meant to kill the poor guy, then.  
  
“So when you come to life on Christmas Eve – what do you usually do?” Sam gets out, trying to focus on the immediate problem despite the memories that are pummeling him.  
  
“We look at the stars,” the fairies answer in unison.  
  
“And how do you go back to being ornaments?”  
  
“We…we wait. And then we change. At dawn.”  
  
Dean sighs. “Right. Guess we’re going to be sitting here for a while.” He looks at Sam.”Wonder if there’s anything left to drink in this house.”  


 

 

                                                                         

 

By dawn Dean has ransacked the house for all the edibles and drinkables and is pacing restlessly, rubbing his shoulder when he thinks Sam isn’t looking. Sam retrieved his laptop from the car and spent the night looking for any legends that talk about things coming to life at Christmas. He’s surprised by the number of stories he finds…but what he doesn’t find is anything useful.  
  
Because the sun is up now and the fairies are still there. Still waiting. Still looking creepily at Dean and Sam.  
  
“What are you feeling?” Dean asks abruptly.  
  
“We feel…anxious…”  
  
“Sad…”  
  
“We hurt…”  
  
“I think that’s your clue right there.”  
  
Sam turns towards his brother. He doesn’t understand.  
  
“You’re feeling. You aren’t waiting. You are feeling, and that keeps you alive.”  
  
Huh.  
  
Sam had not thought about that.  
  
Sam won’t ever admit it, but he’s actually quite impressed with Dean. And, by the look his brother gives Sam, he is, too, with himself.  
  
“But we cannot stop it. We feel this way. How do we go back?”  
  
That’s red-and-green, with tears in her eyes. Sam catches on.  
  
“You can’t. You just…wait. Wait some more. Wait until it doesn’t hurt as bad.”  


 

 

                                                                          

There’s silence in the Impala a long time after they leave town. No radio, no head-banging rock. No carols. Nothing. Just the sound of the engine.  
Sam’s thoughts scatter along the road.  
  
He’s driving, and Dean is resting beside him, pain meds finally kicking in. Sam isn’t really used to being behind the wheel. But Dean didn’t put up much protest when he’d offered, and that said more than the fact that Dean just got dosed in the holiday spirit.  
  
“Stop thinking, Sammy,” Dean mumbles. “You’re ruining a good thing.”  
  
Sam doesn’t know what Dean’s referring to. What they did back there – could it be considered a good thing?  
  
Sure, now the fairies can’t hurt anyone. But how humane is it to leave them like that?  
  
“They killed a man, Sam,” Dean answers the unasked question. “Locking them in Bobby’s storage unit? What's so bad about that? Five by ten room, not like we put them in a freaking box with no air.”  
  
Sam doesn't even know if they would _need_ air but, yeah, Dean’s right. Sam doesn’t really know why he’s so averse to the idea. He should be glad they were close to one of Bobby’s special places, cleaned up, warded, and almost empty. Like there really is a Santa.  
  
But there’s still a myriad of questions running through his head. Like why his brother didn’t just put them down.  
  
“It’s Christmas, man. What were we going to do? Execute them?”  
  
Sam shrugs. He doesn’t know if he could have done it, look them straight in the eye and pull the trigger with no fight from the other side.  
  
“But now what?”  
  
Dean huffs in frustration. “Now we wait till they go back to something we can freaking break. Isn’t that why you set up that camera and took their goddamn wands?”  
  
He just wants to be done with this, it’s clear. Three plus weeks on the road without a stop, and moral dilemmas?  
  
Definitely not Dean’s cup of tea.  
  
Truth is, Sam is tired, too. They’re running on fumes, have been, lately. Sam doesn’t think they missed anything…but he isn’t sure.  
  
They rarely get a break like this without there being a catch. It’s just a little hard to believe.  
  
“So, fairies,” Sam muses out loud.  
  
“Fairies,” Dean accentuates, groaning. Reaching in the backseat, he adds, “And presents.”  
  
He throws a small box in Sam’s lap, paying no mind to the slight swerve that causes.  
  
“We don’t have a tree,” Sam bitches.  
  
He does that when he doesn’t know what to say, when Dean takes him by surprise, and that warmth starts to make its way around his chest uncomfortably.  
  
Dean points to the air freshener hung on the rearview mirror.  
  
“And it’s snowing, so you can’t talk your way out of this one, Grinch.”  
  
It is snowing. It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s snowing, and Dean’s with him.  
  
“So, where’s my present, Sammy?”  
  
When he looks at his brother, the grin he finds there is unfamiliar.  
  
“None for you this year.”  
  
“Sam-“  
  
“Dashboard.”  
  
Dean’s sound of victory when his fingers meet the leather of the new, inscribed wallet Sam got him helps to erase the last few hours from Sam’s memory.  
  
“What’d you get me?” Sam asks, trying to unwrap his present one-handedly.  
  
“Keep your eyes on the road,” Dean warns.  
  
“But-“  
  
“Here,” Dean says, taking the box. Joke is, he doesn’t do that much better of a job than Sam – his left is momentarily useless, too.  
  
But, after a few excruciating minutes, finally, Sam gets to see.  
  
“A bookmark?”  
  
It’s … beautiful. Made of gold metal, an intricate web of interlaced strands forming a Celtic knot. Sam loves it.  
  
“Dean –“  
  
“What, should have gotten the number of the cop instead?”  
  
Well, Sam won’t let Dean know how far off he is on that one.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Yeah, Sammy?”  
  
“Merry Christmas.”  
  
THE END


End file.
